Oh Dear, I’m Not ‘Getting Old,’ I AM OLD

 Written 7/30, but it wouldn't let me post....
I just spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get HERE to write. Of course, I have been doing that ever since I started this stupid blog, but one would think I could remember a silly little thing like that... well, maybe if I wrote something more often, I would. No... from the time I was a kid, I can remember Jessie, the wonder woman of remembering 'important' things like the names and addresses of the about 200 people in her Christmas card list, looking me straight in the face and saying, "Georgie Lou, Betty Rae... what IS your NAME?" I suppose she did the same thing with them... god, I hope so... or was I the odd man out in that crew? Now I'm doing the same thing with my IHS workers... I look at Martha and say... "Ana... no... (?? with the face) and she says politely, just as I said, "Peggy" to my mother, "Martha, Mrs. Cartwright." Yet I do the same thing with Ana... calling her Martha.

Oh the foibles of getting old. I think you forget the things you were bad at anyway. I was never any good at remembering names, ever! Well, we moved so often you had a whole new bunch of names to remember all the time, making the old ones easy to forget. I am ashamed of myself... last night I was writing to a bunch of people from the Women's Exchange and telling one named Jane something about another named Joan... so wrote Dear Joan to her and had to write another note of apology... but jeeze... Jane and Joan and writing about another Joan... the mind boggles. I'm going to be in the Chicago area for the month of September, and now I am trying to reconnect with some of the people I know there.

Lordy I AM OLD... I think by now I must be the oldest one in my family. There are almost no Cartwrights (of my particular line... England was full of cartmakers with our name) left but me... none with the name. I tried to get Mark to change his name to match mine (no one cam spell his fathers, let alone pronounce it correctly) but he kept that dreadful name. He is so much like Daddy that I do wish he had the correct last name, but he is/was as stubborn as Daddy (and me... a real Cartwright). I miss family... the Cartwrights used to have big family reunions and get-togethers up in Port Austin, in Saginaw and all over Michigan... I do still miss those, as I miss sitting with Grandma Cartwright in the big old house, or out on the round-the-house veranda. That's the first place I started for when we went up to the cottage in Port Austin...off to Grandma Cartwright's house as fast as my little legs could run. Mark's middle name 'James' is for Grandpa Cartwright, not for his father. Had I had my way, he would have been called Walter James, but Whitney always says that I should be happy Jim's uncle was called Mark, as it is a lucky name. Well, Mark is a lucky man, he has a beautiful, very bright wife and four gorgeous children, so he must be.

One of the worst things about getting old is being forgotten... and tomorrow is the anniversary of one of my 'triumphs'... the start of my beloved Oak Park Women's Exchange and I am apparently being left out of it completely. I took a look at their fairly new website, where I am not mentioned at all, even in the history. It sort of implies that it was just begun through other women's exchanges. I named it that to honor those institutions... but didn't really have anything to do with them. So, perhaps one of my old friends to whom I wrote last night will think to mention how we began... I built it all in my 'spare time' while working as a copywriter all day... often wonder when I found the time, as that job was a killer. I guess when you are doing too much, you get so you can take on more work without thinking about it. It was fun, and Lori McCarthy was sure a help. There were a lot of hard working women in that Village and we managed to do a lot to make Oak Park a better, more interesting place. Bobbie Raymond was one of the best of the crowd. She and I both divorced our husbands while we were working on big projects... she on being the Housing Director for the Village, and I on the Exchange. I remember going to her house for a 'raspberry party" (she had planted raspberry bushes all the way around her yard, and presented each of us with a little 'hospital pills' type cup full of them as we arrived). When I got there she grabbed me and said, "Peggy, I REALLY admire you!!" I was taken aback... of course I felt the same way about her, but she was so enthusiastic. "Why on earth..." I said. She quickly replied, "You had the damned nerve to take back your maiden name... and EVERYBODY knows it and calls you by that now. I was afraid to do that, figuring no one would know who I was or what my new name was. You've sure got a helluva lot more GUTS than I do!" Well, I didn't, and told her so, but it made me feel good... I had managed to keep all I was doing going, have everyone remember the 'new' name and forget the old. They all knew the whole story, as my life was an open book for pretty obvious reasons... Bobbie could have done the same, she just got cold feet at the last minute. I guess I didn't think... was just too angry about everything. Funny the little things you don't think of at all... but others can admire you for. Well, we'll see about tomorrow, and perhaps I will be permanently forgotten by the new members of my lovely co-op. Of course they are struggling to keep it going... times are hard and I guess they think since they have kept it going it is theirs. (And Bobbie... you'll never know how much I admired you!)

Now that I look over what I have written, I kinda get the feeling that one of my dear old friends over in the East Bay would say... 'That's all crap,' I think he feels that way about most of what I write. Well, he's never read any of my 3-Day novels. I am staying in S.F. through Labour Day just to write one... then I shall get on the plane and head for Chi... at least I have one dear old friend who will be happy to see me, Connie Fillippelli... the saint who is taking me in and will not only teach me all the 'Mac' things I have neglected to learn, but also try to get me back on my feet, walking and in good shape. Which reminds me, I'd better make sure I have an appointment with my doctor before I leave. Call now, Peg.......

Dozen My Favorite People of 2014

So... Time or some magazine listed the 12 most interesting people of the year... or something like that... with very few women both on the listing and listed sides... so I am putting here, my favorite people of the year... do I mean favorite? No... interesting maybe. Interesting to me anyway. I'm an old royalist I guess...
Anyway, here is my top 12 list
 Queen Elizabeth   
 Hillary Clinton
 Barack Obama
 Michelle Obama
 Angela Merkel
 Angelina Joli
 The Dalai Lama
 Aung San Suu Kyi
 Archbishop Desmond Tutu
 Pope Francis
 Judi Dench
 Christiano Ronaldo
I am not into voting for wealthy rock stars or athletes... they do nothing for their countries or peoples most of the time (but Cristiano is adorable! He is like the best ballet dancer who ever lived and gorgeous). You have to be a really great, hard working, charming man to get on my list.

If I wasn't so female conscious, I would have added Brad Pitt with Angelina Joli and George Clooney for all his work in the Sudan and other places. The Queen of England is one of the most amazing people around... she's almost my age and out there doing her job daily... and she looks great! The royal kids are pretty good too.

My Goodness!

What else can I say... I was thinking about 1939! Back in the olden days... like when Whitney used to ask me "Did they have phones then," or "Did they have radios then" I'm surprised she didn't ask if they had roads then. But it all came back with a bang when I was listening to the girls talking about it on PBS News tonight. Today in 1939 was the day Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial... the famous concert arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt when the nasty little old ladies at the DAR said she couldn't sing in their "Constitution Hall." I have rarely seen Jessie as indignant as she told us all about it. She had, of course, heard that Eleanor Roosevelt had burnt her DAR membership card, then made the arrangement for the Lincoln Memorial concert. Jessie had been carefully doing all her research on our ancestors who had fought in the Battle of Lexington & Concord and other Revolutionary battles. She was almost finished with her work, which she swept up into a pile on her old melodian desk and burned... joining Mrs. Roosevelt. I can still hear her anger and disgust with the nasty, fussy, stupid little old women in the DAR... and telling us all (particularly Daddy) that she and Eleanor belonged to a much better organization, The Democratic Party. Those women really were stupid... the DAR was never thought of in the same way after that. Never thought of at all I suppose, except as a rather foolish bunch of fussy little old ladies.

Well, hooray for women like Eleanor and Jessie for standing up to everyone and making their voices heard... and yes, Whitney, we did have phones then, and radios then, and your big mouthed grandmother and little old me, watching and listening and learning how to be as much like her as possible. No, she didn't get to be the first woman to have a story accepted by Esquire Magazine, and she never got that stodgy old Norge Corporation board to give her the title of Vice President, but she sure ran that business, and it sure went under fast when she finally retired after working full time until she was 75 years old. And she was adored by a lot of people, including Kate Smith and Jimmy Durante and everyone else she came in contact with over her many years... even Arnold Gingrich, who couldn't publish her stories in Esquire when he was their editor, but he always wrote and told her how great her writing was and where to send it to be published.

And here's to Marian Anderson, a sweet, kind woman. She said herself she was no fighter, she was just upset at being lied to about why those nasty, fussy little old ladies refused to have her sing in their hall. That should be a lesson to all the racists still left out there. Amazing to think that even after all these years (from 1939 to today) there are still a few of them left. Fools are hard to kill off, though.

Where the Money Goes...

Ah, once more my feeling that the extremely wealthy people of this country neither know nor care about millions of ‘the poor, the starving’ or whatever you wish to call the huge multitude of extremely poor people who live in this country. I could say “that surround them” here in the United States, but I doubt that they know of or have ever even seen them. When you are driven about in a limo with tinted windows you don’t see much.

These super-wealthy really know how to distribute their money well. After all, they do undoubtedly pay people to care for them or their children. But maids and gardeners are easy to find these days They can even be ‘imported’ from another country and are ready and willing to work for minimum wage, or below, until someone rats on you, but the shame of the publicity only lasts until a Kardashian does another foolish thing and takes the heat off you. Nannies may cost a little more, the children do have to be well taken care of, but again, you can ‘import’ a nannie from another country and the children will perhaps learn to speak another language.

Now comes ‘what to do to keep from paying taxes.’ That seems to be a big part of the super-wealthy’s ‘work.’ Well, they pay very high priced lawyers and tax accountants to do a lot of the work on this, but one does have to have ‘charities’ to donate to, to show how generous one is. Here, for example is a statement about one of the wealthiest women in the U.S.:

“She is the granddaughter of Frank C. Mars, who was the founder of the Mars candy bar company in America. Jacqueline Mars is currently the third richest woman in the United States. Though she inherited this wealth, she does spend quite a bit of time with charitable activities. She is a strong supporter of the National Symphony Orchestra and operates as Vice President of the U.S. Equestrian Team.”  The Richest by Sammy Said

And another:  “Alice Walton net worth: American heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune, Alice Louise Walton, has a net worth of $35.1 billion as of 2014 making her the second richest woman in the world. She is the daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and Helen Walton. She is building Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.” ... same (This museum is to house the art she tried to give to several museums, but they turned it down... no tax relief there.)

All of which again, simply goes to show just what I have always said about the ‘charitable giving’ of these people. Somehow I don’t see much help for the halt, lame or starving of this country in their ‘giving.’ My feeling is that the average (and there are SO MANY now) wealthy person in the U.S. gives their charitable money to anyone who can entertain them. In other words, most give only to symphonies, ballet companies, museums... oh, yes, and the U.S. Equestrian Team. Mrs. Mars must have a child who loves horses, or perhaps she was the child, and I guess still is, as she doesn’t seem to notice that there are starving children all around her. Of course, none of them are allowed to get anywhere near her, they might disturb the horses.